I am interested in examining and reimagining our relationship to our racial identities through healing our collective understanding of belonging and what it means to be family. My life-size oil paintings use the figure and portraiture to explore issues of multiculturalism, identity, representation, and race. I investigate these through use of the personal, often sharing the images and stories of family, friends, and community members to reflect the subtle and not-so-subtle integrations of these ideas into individual lives and identities.

 I immigrated to the United States from Lebanon with my family at age nineteen. Lebanon is a country that has seen conflict, violence, and war within my lifetime. I depict personal experiences related to my identity, belonging, and immigration as a Muslim female in the United States. Muslims are often seen as terrorists in the US media and have been marginalized since 9/11. The rise of white nationalism within the current global political climate has made it more dif cult to identify as a Muslim and a new immigrant.

  My work is a documentation of what I want to say and what I’m afraid to admit. Through various experiences, I nd consistent heartbreaks. These paintings began as an aversion to pleasure— I did not recognize myself. They are reflections of abandonment that stare and blink back at me; it was a full-body itch I could not reach. Now, I am trying to catch up after losing my place. Now, it’s hard to look you in the eye after you’ve seen the work.

 Ricardo Partida’s work largely critiques and illuminates depictions of gender and desire in the Western art canon. Using the visual language of the figura serpentinata, his works exalt alter egos that question conventional power structures while obscuring artist and subject. Through the use of surface treatments and mark-making, and by hybridizing lines and proportions previously associated with a gendered painting language, Partida creates surrogacies of seduction that explore carnal desires through a push-and-pull of menace and allure.

The primary source of inspiration for me is the current repression of women throughout patriarchal societies. Growing up, I gradually recognized how women do not benefit from the same opportunities as men in their everyday lives. Having consistently observed how many facets of society are established to favor men over women, I questioned how my life would differ if none of these boundaries existed. My work depicts scenes that women would be typically excluded from, even though it’s entirely normal for men to be doing such things—drinking, picnicking, swimming, celebrating freedom.

My work—satirical drawings, comics, and textiles—is woven from elaborate, humorous, and politically pointed narratives that expose the experiences with sexism that women have faced throughout history and continue to face every day. Primarily, I have been using carpet to create figurative works that visually mimic latch hook rugs, yet deviate from the medium’s traditional subject matter, depiction style, and scale.

A painter by training, Benjamin Cabral makes work that is largely autobiographical, creating an honest yet inherently unreliable self-portrait. Cabral’s recent paintings are entirely encrusted with beads and rhinestones. They are conceived digitally, and the pixels are then transferred to the panel through a meditative application of beads. These works examine the intersections of trauma and nostalgia, joy and sorrow, and the digital and the analog. Cabral also creates sculptural works intended to be static performers engaging with the viewer.

Suspended between recognizable forms and dreamt abstraction, my paintings rely on their physical surface to anchor themselves within a larger structure of color, texture, and symbol. Motifs often repeat, reflecting as mirages of themselves, tracing a bumpy line connecting the work and the images within it. The surfaces inform the images—leaving room for autonomy within the paintings, as if they’ve constructed themselves. I’m interested in the parallels between physical material and a sense of clarity and misunderstanding.

My paintings are both real and imagined, rooted within my memories of adolescence. I mythologize my past in my present through paint. The images in my paintings are intimate glimpses of everyday events, with characters that are both vulnerable and playful.

Through a graphic style and use of vivid colors, these commonplace scenes are exaggerated while still capturing distinct human emotions. These moments are specific yet universal, and offer a humorous approach to dealing with relatable memories, fears, and desires.